14.1. Introduction

Figure 14.1 illustrates a typical corporate network with security zones. You can follow the network flow as it comes in from the Internet and first hits the router. Then the flow arrives at the firewall, and there are a number of points where a NIDS (network-intrusion detection system) might also be hooked up1.

Figure 14.1. A high-level view of a typical corporate network with security zones.

There is a clear separation between the systems that are publicly accessible from the outside world and those that are accessed locally. You also can see the possible placement of a few honeypot systems2, which are discussed further later in this chapter. Assume that antivirus and related content-filtering systems such as spam detection are in place, even though they are not shown in this particular example. For example, firewalls often implement antivirus interfaces so that they can scan the content of e-mail messages for malicious traffic. Personal firewalls and host-based intrusion detection and prevention systems are not shown in this picture, but as you will see, they are highly important in dealing with network attacks against individual hosts on your network3.

In the following sections, I will discuss these important network-level defense techniques and their relationship to early-warning systems.